


Too Early

by last_crow



Category: Naruto
Genre: F/M, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-08
Updated: 2017-04-08
Packaged: 2018-10-16 06:34:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10565661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/last_crow/pseuds/last_crow
Summary: Kakashi had never been accused of being too early before.





	

When Sakura was five years old, a man disappeared right in front of her eyes.

No poof, no smoke, no sound. Right into thin air.

Now, Sakura was also born into a village where there were people who regularly did this sort of thing, but she was fairly certain that he had not meant to disappear as he had been saying something before being cut off. It surprised her at the time, but she thought that it must have disconcerted him more—disappearing without intending to could come as a shock.

She had been playing in her backyard with her dolls, building furniture out of sticks and leaves when a shadow fell over her. He was taller than most other adults, even though his posture was terrible, his shoulders rounded in a way that Sakura’s mother would identify as having a ‘bad attitude.’ The uniform he wore was the same as the ones she had seen on fully fledged shinobi at the Academy. She had never seen him before, but began to fear that her teacher had sent him to speak to her parents about a (little) fight she had with Chiaki--which Sakura had thought she had been in the clear about. She hugged her favorite doll to herself.

The man scrubbed a hand through the spiky silver hair on his head while he muttered something to himself. A forehead protector dangled in his other hand, the red cloth tattered and the metal scarred deeply enough to obscure the village symbol. He looked at his surroundings with frustration evident on his face.

Finally, Sakura couldn’t stand it anymore. “Am I in trouble?” she blurted out.

He froze, seeming to remember at last that she was there. “Excuse me?”

“Chiaki teased me first!” she spoke quickly to defend herself. Her heartbeat sped up and she clutched the doll tighter. “Ino saw. I was just standing up for myself.”

“Um…okay.” The man nodded slowly. He sat cross-legged on the grass in front of her. The forehead protector was draped over his thigh and he seemed careful not to let it touch the ground.

“Isn’t that why you’re here?” she squeaked. She relaxed her grip on her doll by a fraction, though she still held it in front of herself like a shield.

He chuckled, reaching over to ruffle her hair. It was a familiar gesture--not something that a stranger should do. “No, I made a wrong turn on the way over. I’m not really sure what to do now.”

“Where were you going?” She knew how to walk to school and to the store by herself and felt that maybe she could help him.

He considered his words carefully before answering, “To meet a friend. I have a message, you see.” His dark eyes crinkled into a smile above the edge of his mask. She noticed a deep scar running down his eyelid into his cheek. “Now I’m not sure how I’ll ever get it to her. It was kind of my only shot at it. I’m too early.”

“Can’t you wait?”

“I don’t know how much longer I can stay.”

Sakura screwed up her face in thought. “Maybe you could leave the message with me. I’ll try to find her.”

“That’s part of the—” something seemed to occur to him in the middle of his sentence. “Hm. All right, Sakura-chan, I think you can help me. You see, I have a terrible memory.” He tapped his temple, ruefully shaking his head and making her giggle. “If we ever meet again, do you think you could give me a reminder?”

“I can remember. I’m the best at memorizing characters in my class.” Sakura grinned. Better than Ino, she didn’t add.

He smiled back, then replied softly, “I’m sure you are.” Unconsciously, his fingers traced the scarred metal of the forehead protector on his lap. “Just let me know: ‘Too early.’”

Sakura frowned in confusion even as she nodded. “But too early for what?”

The pleasant expression on his face flickered for a moment. When he spoke again, there was a raw edge to his voice. “It’s really important that you tell me.”

“O-okay.” She was frightened by the sudden intensity he displayed.

He sighed, putting his hands in his pockets. “Thank you.”

That’s when it happened. Sakura blinked and he disappeared.

She jumped to her feet, her head turning as she searched the whole yard for where he could have gone. There was no sign of him in the small vegetable patch her family kept in the corner of the property. Nor was he seated among the leafy branches of the tree above her. Was it an advanced jutsu that she hadn’t learned about yet?

A passing breeze brought the last remnants of his scent to her nose. She wasn’t actually certain she could smell it or if it was her imagination. It reminded her of a winter’s night, with snow falling in thick layers of whites and blue-grays against the darkness outside of her window.

Her gaze fell on the grass where he had been just a moment ago, the strange encounter playing itself again in her head. She turned over the message he wanted to send to himself, trying to find a deeper meaning in it and not coming up with anything. Too early? Two words that meant nothing to her. She didn’t even know his name or how to find him again, though he seemed fairly confident that their paths would cross again and that she could get the message to himself.

…She didn’t know his name, but he knew hers. He’d called her ‘Sakura-chan.’

How did he know?

\--

Sakura was summoned for the first, but not last, time in her young life to the Hokage’s office. The building stood in the cool shadows of the village monument, directly beneath the same stony faces that watched over her as she walked to the Academy in the morning. The Sandaime liked to visit classrooms and Sakura had seen him before, but never up close, never as the focus of his attention. She had always been safe from his imposing gaze within the anonymity of her fellow students. Her natural urge was to hide behind her mother like a baby. Instead, she rocked backed and forth on the balls of her feet and stare at the scabs on her knees.

The Hokage’s ceremonial headdress was placed on the desk off to the side. The bold red slashes reading ‘fire’ seemed like they were branded into the white cloth. The Sandaime laced his fingers together in front of his face, his elbows coming to rest on the desk, while he considered her with an expression she couldn’t read. Sakura didn’t think him to be an unkind man and she had always been told that he was a wise leader. He waited patiently for her answer to his question. Sakura’s mother nodded encouragingly.

Sakura gulped, straightening her shoulders and forcing her spine straighter. She kept her hands in tight fists at her sides. “The man with silver hair just told me th-that he had a message. For himself.”

“Do you know why he approached you? Have you met him before?” the Sandaime asked. The same questions that her mother had asked her earlier.

“N-no. Never.” Sakura blinked quickly. There was a tight feeling in her stomach like the time she had climbed to the top of the tallest tree in the park on a dare.

The Sandaime rumbled before turning to the open window behind him. “Kakashi?”

Sakura’s eyes widened when the stranger with silver hair climbed inside and leaned against the wall, hands tucked into his pockets. She automatically pointed. “It’s you!”

Kakashi tilted his head, his only visible eye narrowing on her. In this light, his gray iris appeared nearly black. She let her hand drop when everyone stared at her for her sudden outburst.

“This is Hatake Kakashi. One of our finest jounin,” the Sandaime said. “You’re sure you saw this man?”

A jounin. An elite shinobi. It was a level that Sakura herself could only dream about at this stage of her training. She understood now the Sandaime’s skepticism that this man would even know of Sakura’s existence.

“I’m not lying.” Sakura’s cheeks flushed.

“We’re not saying that you are.” The Sandaime raised his hands in a calming gesture, bowing his head slightly. “But it’s very important that we can be sure about what you saw and what you heard. Now, take a good look at Kakashi over there. Did he look exactly the same?”

Sakura was ready to nod, but stopped herself, squinting as she took a closer look. “He didn’t have his eye covered.”

The two men exchanged glances.

“Do you think they meant to infiltrate the village?” Kakashi suggested to the Hokage.

“Perhaps.” The Sandaime motioned for Sakura to continue. “Anything else?”

“A scar?” Sakura motioned toward her left eye, drawing a line above it.

Kakashi stilled, frowning deeply. “That’s an odd detail. Why include my scar if they were going to get it wrong anyway?”

“A strange mistake, to be certain,” the Sandaime said.

“He also had a message…for himself. ’Too early.’” Sakura watched intently for Kakashi’s reaction, but was sorely disappointed when there was none. The only indication that he had heard her was the slight shift of his eye over to her, then back to the Sandaime.

The Sandaime and Kakashi were implying that the man that she had met had been a potential enemy. Sakura saw now that Kakashi was a different person than the stranger who had approached her. The impostor was a good actor, both in likeness and mannerisms, but he had treated Sakura like an old friend while Kakashi was truly someone she had just met for the first time in her life. She supposed that if someone really was trying to deceive her, they would treat her kindly, though she still didn’t understand why it had to have been her.

“I will have ANBU monitor the situation and see if the girl is being followed,” the Sandaime said.

Seven years passed before Sakura saw Kakashi again. No one discovered what the impostor had wanted. When no answer turned up, she let it fade in her memories.

But she never forgot.

\--

_Seven Years Later_

“Sensei, you’re late!” Sakura and Naruto exclaimed at the same time, both of them pointing accusing fingers.

Kakashi acknowledged them blithely, making soothing noises as he loped down the bridge toward his students with his hands in his pockets. “I had to help my neighbor find her escaped boa constrictor.”

He suppressed a chuckle as they (predictably) exploded in anger and frustration. Sakura liked to think of herself as above Naruto’s antics, but more often than not, the two were synced up as if they had been friends all their lives. Sasuke remained quietly out of it, meditating under a tree and ignoring the commotion.

Kakashi sighed, shaking his head while he pulled out an orange book from his vest and flipping to the part where he had left off. “Twenty laps around the training yard. Go.”

Two weeks ago, he had been assigned his little team. They had surprised him, which didn’t happen very often, leading to his decision to keep them. There were no regrets so far. Well, maybe his students had some, but Kakashi did not. He found himself looking forward to his day and that was something he realized that he had not done in a long time.

Naruto was the first to finish his laps, falling backwards on the dirt near Kakashi’s feet, laughing triumphantly through his gasps for air. The kid had heart and spunk, but Kakashi wasn’t sure if any of the Yondaime’s talents had been passed on to his son. There were, however, some rare moments of creativity that made him think there could be more to Naruto in the future.

Sasuke came in shortly after, doubling over and resting his hands on his knees while he caught his breath. Naruto took the opportunity, despite his exhaustion, to declare himself superior before collapsing in a heap again.

Sakura was a few laps behind the boys, circling around two more times and then finally coming to a stop. Kakashi lowered the book in front of his face by a fraction as she crossed through his range of vision. Years ago, she had claimed to have met him and passed on a message. _Too early_.

At first, it drove him insane. He was certain that it was a code of some sort. An enemy who had returned, a secret from his past meant to be deciphered, but he didn’t even know the person who had sent it. Additionally, why this child? Before being summoned to the Hokage’s office together, he had never laid an eye on her. Kakashi had no connections to her family. The Haruno clan was a respectable, but ordinary group. They would have gone on being strangers if a trick of fate hadn’t landed her on his team, bringing them together again.

He and Sakura never spoke of the incident. As far as the other members of Team Seven were concerned, the first time they had met was in that classroom. He wondered if she even remembered, since she had been so young, barely tall enough to see over the edge of the Hokage’s desk.

_Too early._

_Too early._

He was often accused of being late (something he disagreed with since time was a construct). Instead of a message, he had the sinking feeling it was a warning.

\--

_Four Years Later_

Sakura sat in front of the fire by herself, taking swigs from a bottle of sake, tears staining her cheeks as she tried to put Naruto’s anguished looked of betrayal out of her mind as they took Sasuke away. She told herself had done the right thing. This was the only way that they could begin to heal now that the war was over. Sasuke still needed to answer to the village, what was left of it, for what he had done.

A week since the final battle. A week since they had saved the world.

The hospital had been nearly untouched, thank goodness. Sakura slept in one of the on-call rooms when she wasn’t rotating on a seemingly endless amount of shifts. The less fortunate, the ones whose homes and businesses had been completely decimated, took shelter in temporary refugee encampments while they waited for Yamato to finish rebuilding their block. Rubble and debris had to be cleared away in enormous loads, the remains of their village that they needed to put aside. What would they look like once the work was done? She knew that it was impossible that it would be the same. They’d lost too many people for that. Even among the medical staff, it seemed as if ragged holes had been cut where her co-workers had once been. Everyone had lost someone. After learning about the death of Inoichi, Ino moved through her day like a ghost, her already pale skin washed out and caked in dust and ash.

She had grown used to the fighting, facing the next enemy, taking each day _survive_ one more moment, one more second, until the end.

And then it ended.

But for so many of the shinobi, it had not. She heard the nightmares through the thin fabric of the tents, the cries for help, the eyes that glazed over in the middle of a conversation. She saw it in the mirror when she nervously plucked strands of hair out of her scalp, leaving pieces of pink where ever she went.

“Can I join you?” Kakashi approached the fire. The light left shadows on his face that settled into the sharp hollows of his bones. She caught a glance of red cloth before he stuffed it into his pocket.

She nodded her head, gathering up her knees into her chest, not looking at him. They sat together in silence and listened to the snaps and pops of the flames burning away the wood.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“Is that a trick question?” He tilted his head. He took a stick off the ground and began prodding the flames.

“My sensei wouldn’t just casually come up to me to chat. He’d rather die than make small talk.”

“That’s true,” he said, tossing the stick aside. “Small talk is the worst. But we weren’t making small talk, were we?”

He had a point, but she didn’t concede anything. She absolutely didn’t mention that those few moments of silence had been the most comfortable minutes she’d had in the past week. She had been grateful that he just let her be without leaving her alone. Kakashi’s presence alone was enough.

And it _was_ Kakashi. She checked his chakra signature to confirm his identity, but the soft, affectionate look he was giving her, the feeling that if she wanted to, she could lean on him and fall into a dreamless sleep, that couldn’t come from the same man that she referred to as sensei.

“Is something on your mind?” he asked.

“Do you remember…a long time ago. The first time we met?” Her voice was soft, barely above a whisper.

Kakashi stilled, his gaze dropping to the ground. “Of course.”

He was lying.

Why was he lying?

“What did you think of me then?” She moved closer to him, turning her head so that she could study his expression more closely, not wanting to miss the slightest movement.

“…I thought you were smart, but distracted.”

She blinked. Then a laugh bubbled out, a sweet relief after being serious for so long. “Surprisingly honest.”

He laughed with her, not really understanding, but enjoying her amusement anyway. She leaned closer, closer. Their lips were almost brushing together, their breath intermingling. He could probably smell the sake she had been drinking. He didn’t move.

“Now I know for sure you’re not sensei,” she murmured. “You’re him, aren’t you? The other one. The one I met when I was five.”

“Yes.” He brushed back a piece of her hair behind her ear.

“People thought I was crazy or being mind-controlled by an enemy nin. ANBU watched my house for years.”

He winced. “I’m sorry.”

“This time, don’t be so fucking mysterious. Why did you want me to send that message?” Her fingers grazed the cloth of his mask over his jawline, feeling the bone and muscle beneath.

“It didn’t matter. Nothing changed.” He squeezed his eyes shut as if in pain. “I’ve probably messed things up as it is. I shouldn’t say anything more.”

“Hm?” She wasn’t exactly listening, too distracted by how nice he smelled and the warmth radiating from his body. Damn it, did she want to kiss her pervy sensei?

As if he’d heard her treacherous thoughts, he said, “Stop.”

He stood up and backed away from her. Their eyes were locked, burning into each other. She was almost panting, her skin tingling all over her body, as if they had been doing something far less innocent.

He did it again. He disappeared.

For a long time, she stared at the spot he had occupied. There were the barest traces of his footprints where his weight had pressed into the dirt, unnoticeable if one didn’t know to look.

She brought out the red forehead protector he had tried to hide from behind her back, frowning at the scarred metal. It surprised her that she could distract him so easily. Another difference between this man and her sensei.

Before, she had not noticed the deep blooms of blood that blended into the cloth. She touched the fraying ends and saw the stitched cherry blossom that she remembered being so proud of.

Kakashi startled her, appearing out of the shadows. He wasn’t wearing his flak jacket as the other one had been. His dark eyes were cold despite the heat of the fire.

He crossed his arms. “Talk. Now.”

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
